To Make Them Pay
by ksolo-jedi
Summary: My first ever fanfic. Takes place during ANH, and goes over Leia's time on the Death Star. please read+review


Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars, George Lucas does, and I'm not making a single penny off of this, so don't sue me. My parents wouldn't be happy.

Summary: Takes place during ANH and involves Leia's time on the Death Star.

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To Make Them Pay

The black orb hovered over her, the hum of its repulsors becoming the sound of dread in her ears. Her body convulsed suddenly as the interrogator droid injected the fiery liquid into her blood stream, making her insides seem to boil from within. She scream our in pain, agony, and outrage, and lashed out at the repulsive black monster that was holding her captive in such a harsh and cruel way. She had heard of this kind of torture from the few poor and unfortunate beings who had experienced it for themselves, but at the time she couldn't understand the just how horrible it was. She'd nod and feel pity for those who had been affected by it, but now, now the tables had turned. 

She felt the drugs begin to affect her, felt them try to persuade her to break, to give up. _There's no use_, they seemed to say. And the more she resisted, the more they persisted. It was as if they had a life of their own. Then she felt the change. Her extremities began to tingle and go numb, and then she lost all sensation. The tingle began moving up, every end of every nerve on fire.

And then it stopped. She opened her eyes. A tall dark man clad in black with a cape and a breathing mask stood over her, and she struggled to stand up. Not finding the strength, the young woman settled for half kneeling, leaning against a duri-steel wall of her cell in the detention center of the armored space station, the Death Star, for support, and spat at the dark masked interrogator in a most unladylike fashion.

"You will tell me where the hidden Rebel base is, your father wishes it." The cold, deep, wheezing, mechanically synthesized voice cut through the uneasy stillness of the air. The Dark Lord of the Sith continued. "You would not like to disappoint him, now would you?"

"My father . . ." the princess repeated. "No! No liar! You dirty, no-good, rotten, lying sorry excuse for a Sith!" She lashed out again at Darth Vader, but this time he caught her arm and twisted slightly. "No . . ." Princess and Senator Leia Organa of the Royal House of Alderaan muttered through broken tears, "no."

She felt warm, and a buzz rang in her head. Sensations of comfort and happiness flowed through her, but something inside of told her not to listen to it, that this warmth and comfort was dangerous. As the driod injected her once again, the sensations suddenly left her, and her body and soul seemed to cry out for their return, and they we're answered. 

__

"Yes, comfort. Warmth. You would like these things. I can give them to you, I can make all the pain and suffering go away. All you have to do is give me what I need in return. I'm not asking much, just for your small donation in the struggle to save the galaxy. Isn't that what you and you father wish? To save the galaxy from destruction? Now is your chance. Where is the Rebel base?"

The warm glow became overwhelming, but the she held on. It seemed dark, somehow, this glow. She could not place it, but Leia felt the hidden dark, the danger, behind the light. The voice persisted deeper into her mind, searching out her secrets. _Too close_, she thought to herself. It prodded deeper, and she struggled mentally against it harder with dulled and diminished senses. She could feel the fake warmth waver, the cold, dark, angry, hateful coming out into the open for a moment, then suddenly gone as quickly as it had come.

She gathered all the strength she had left and screamed at the dark thing in her mind. _GET OUT!!!_ She sensed it flicker, it suddenly pause, and she used this moment to block off all road through her mind and force it back.

It worked. The thing lift her mind and the pain of the drugs overcame her as she began to slip into unconsciousness and fell back down onto the hard metal cot. The last thing she heard before everything went blank was Darth Vader's command to release her. The pain left. "She is to be put under constant surveillance, but left alone. Do not disturb her, Commander. Understand? Do not disturb her."

"Yes, my Lord."

Then the young Alderinian princess' mind went black.

A Mere Few Hours Later:

Leia jerked awake from an uneasy sleep as her cell door swished open and Darth Vader walked in. She looked over his shoulder. No interrogation droid. She didn't know what was going on, but she didn't think she was going to like it, whatever it was. Quickly, She put on a Regal face and hardened her expression.

"Come with me, Princess."

"What? No more interrogation?"

Two stormroopers stepped forward and cuffed her.

"I wouldn't speak if I were you, Princess. You might not find the end results to your liking. Follow me." With that, he turned around and started walking off. The stormtroopers shoved her out and she got up and followed after the Dark Lord.

After walking through endless bleak and similar hallways and riding up and down various elevators, they eventually arrived at the "bridge". He led her and the troopers to the main viewport. 

"We have entered the Alderaan system."

Leia looked from the Imperial Admiral to the man he was addressing. She did not know the admiral, but the Grand Moff she did. Governor Grand Moff Tarkin was a well-known member of the Imperial Senate, a member which she whole-heartedly loathed.

"Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash." Tarkin was one of the few people who had authority over the Sith Lord. "I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board." Her voice was taunting, and she spoke matter-of-factly.

"Charming, to the last," he replied, matching her tone. "You don't know how hard I found it to sign the order to terminate your life."

"I'm surprised you had the courage to take on the responsibility for yourself!" she scoffed.

"Princess Leia," he began, ignoring her last comment, "before your execution, I would like you to be my guest in a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No star system will dare oppose the Empire now!"

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." She spoke lightly, but firmly. She didn't know where this was going, but it _definitely_ was _not_ good.

"Not after we demonstrate the power of this station. In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that will be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's destructive power on . . . your home planet of Alderaan."

"No! Alderaan is peaceful! We have no weapons. You can't possibly-"

He abruptly cut her off though, sick of this little game. "You would prefer another target? A military target? Then name the system!" He walked toward Leia menacingly. "I grow tired of asking this, so it'll be the last time: Where is the Rebel base?"

The intercom announced the approach of the Alderaan system. Not knowing any other way, she had to give up. Well, almost. Perhaps an older, abandoned base would do. She bowed her head. "Dantooine," she said softly. "They're on Dantooine."

"There, you see Lord Vader?" He said, obviously pleased with himself. "She can be reasonable." He turned to the Admiral. "You may fire when ready."

"What?!" Leia shouted, not caring about regal composure. He double-crossed her! How _could_ he?

"You're far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration. But don't worry. We will deal with your Rebel friends soon enough." He had a very victorious look upon his face.

"No!" She cried desperately as she struggled against Vader.

Then mere seconds later, the beautiful, peaceful, blue and green planet exploded into an equally beautiful flower of fire as everything on the planet, her family, her people, her home, became space dust in less than a second. She went numb. Her mind became blank and all that she noticed around her was the buzz in her head. She felt dizzy, and didn't quite believe what had just happened. The next thing she knew, she was back alone in her cell, still completely blank.

One Day Later:

As Princess Leia Organa brushed her hair in her temporary room on the Millennium Falcon, the crew quarters, she didn't bother to stop the tears from coming. It was finally sinking in. Alderaan was gone. She had no more family. All that she'd ever known was destroyed in the blink of an eye. She had no more home. The Rebellion was all she had left. And if it wasn't for a blue eyed strangely familiar boy of about her age and a cocky smuggler with a beat-up trash can of a ship, she might be dead right now too, just like her planet.

Her life had changed so dramatically these past three days; the Empire had crossed the line ten-fold. _But,_ she wondered sourly, _how many others had suffered like I have? Perhaps they suffered in different ways, but I'm willing to bet that most of them were in the hands of the Empire._ Maybe the two brave men who had saved her from a certain doom (though she would never admit it to the know-it-all, rude, obnoxious, conceited trash can pilot Solo) would join her and her band of freedom fighters. _Luke would,_ she thought to herself. _But Captain Solo is a different story._ Then again . . . she had a strange feeling about him.

Leia had found, over her years as a politician, that she had a remarkable gift for judging people. She had a feeling than there might be more to Han Solo that meets the eye, maybe even more than he would admit. The captain, Han, seemed to have had a hard past, and his indifference to everything might be a result of past hurts. But no matter what his reasons were, she still didn't feel that it would be easy for him to just join the alliance.

Luke Skywalker, the boy, had lost nearly everything these past few days too. From his story, he had told her that the Empire had killed his aunt and uncle, who were the only family he had left. And now the great Jedi, General Obi-Wan Kenobi, his mentor in the ways of the Jedi, was dead. That in itself was strange too. She had been told that the General and Darth Vader were the only Force users left in the galaxy, and now here was this young man who had had these powers his whole life and never known of them. Maybe there were other unknowing and unassuming Force-potentials in the galaxy.

But she couldn't worry about such things right now; she just had to make sure that the technical readouts within the astromech driod R2-D2 reached the Rebellion. With them, they could find a weakness to the space station, but without them, the Rebellion was hopeless. She still thought that they had escaped too easily. _Maybe we're being followed,_ she thought suddenly. She put down the brush and got up. _Well, we'll just have to work quickly then._ Leia wrapped her hair into a loose bun at the nape of her neck and exited the cabin.

She would make the Empire pay for what they'd done. She swore to every god in the galaxy, she would make them pay at all costs.


End file.
